Champagne, celebs and artefacts: British Museum hosts first lavish ‘pink ball’ fundraiser

There will be champagne, of course, and dancing, fine Indian food served alongside the Parthenon marbles and cocktails mixed in front of the Renaissance treasures of the Waddesdon bequest. And everywhere – from the lights illuminating the Greek revival architecture, to the carpet on which guests arrive, to the glamorous outfits they are requested to wear – a very particular shade of pink.When the British Museum throws open its doors on Saturday evening for its first “pink ball”, it will not only be hosting an enormous and lavish party, but also inaugurating what its director, Nicholas Cullinan, has called a “flagship national event” that he hopes will become as important to his institution’s finances as it will to the London elite’s social calendar.Eight hundred invited guests have each paid £2,000 to party alongside some of the world’s most sensational artefacts and a roll call of bigwigs from the worlds of fashion, art and culture: Naomi Campbell and Alexa Chung, Miuccia Prada and Manolo Blahnik, Sir Steve McQueen and Sir Grayson Perry and Dame Kristin Scott Thomas.As well as glitz, however, there will be brass

My cultural awakening: ‘The Specials helped me to stop fixating on death’

My anxious disposition means I think about death a lot. But a cluster of people I loved dying in 2023, and most of them unexpectedly and within a few months of each other, was enough to shake my nervous system up pretty significantly. Five funerals is too many. The first was my nan: she was the family matriarch. The oldest person in the family, so there was a level of acceptance among the sadness

From After the Hunt to the Last Dinner Party: your complete entertainment guide to the week ahead

After the HuntOut nowJulia Roberts stars in the latest from Challengers director Luca Guadagnino: a cancel-culture thriller set in the aftermath of an accusation of sexual assault on a college campus. She plays a philosophy professor at Yale, whose colleague Hank (Andrew Garfield) claims he is innocent of the charges against him.FrankensteinOut nowYears in the making, decades in the dreaming, Guillermo del Toro’s splendidly visceral take on one of literature’s true greats, starring Oscar Isaac as the eponymous scientist and an unrecognisable Jacob Elordi, asthe Creature, is long and messy and brilliant. It deserves to be seen on the big screen (though a Netflix release is following hot on the heels of this cinema release if you do miss it).SunlightOut nowComedian Nina Conti makes her directing debut with a deliciously dark road trip comedy that isn’t for the faint of heart

The Guide #213: Should we mourn the demise of TV channels?

For seasoned tea-leaf readers of the future of TV in the UK, two stories will have stood out this week, swirling around at the bottom of their cups. There was the news that MTV is shutting down its music channels – sad for those of us who misspent their youth watching them, though hardly surprising either, given MTV’s decades-long shift away from music and towards rolling repeats of Teen Mom and shows about tattooists. And there was a media piece in the Guardian about the demise of British TV’s once-gold plated 9pm slot, which for the first time last month failed to achieve a rating of 1m or more among any of the major broadcasters.That second story was a little surprising. Overnight viewing figures are in constant decline in the streaming age, but even by those standards, not one solitary rating over 1m is eye-catching

Jimmy Kimmel on the Republicans: ‘So much greed and hypocrisy and duplicity’

Late-night hosts spoke about Donald Trump’s attempts to transform the White House and how he was “cashing in bigly” on being president.On Jimmy Kimmel Live! the host spoke about Trump’s “goon squad” indicting his former national security adviser John Bolton while the president was still “brazenly lying about the economy”.This week Trump also met with Vladimir Putin, something he bragged about on social media before claiming that he is the only president to have ended a war. “All the other wars ended mysteriously by themselves,” Kimmel said.Trump also “still has his eye on the ballroom” hosting an event for investors willing to help fund a renovation

Laurence Fox’s libel claim over racism accusations to go to retrial

Laurence Fox’s libel claim after he was called a racist on social media will go to a retrial, the court of appeal has ruled.The former actor was successfully sued by Simon Blake, who is now the chief executive of Stonewall, and the drag artist Crystal over a row on the social media platform Twitter, now called X.Fox, 47, called Blake and the former RuPaul’s Drag Race contestant, whose real name is Colin Seymour, “paedophiles” in an exchange about a decision by Sainsbury’s to mark Black History Month in October 2020.Fox called for a boycott of the supermarket and was called “a racist” by the men, as well as by the broadcaster Nicola Thorp, before he responded with the “paedophile” tweets which led to the initial libel claims.In two judgments in 2024, Mrs Justice Collins Rice ruled in favour of Blake and Seymour, and said Fox should pay them £90,000 each in damages